A Brooklyn man was convicted Thursday of raping a Utah teenager who came to New York with her mother last September to appear on the "Sally Jessy Raphael" show.
The victim, who was 13 at the time, disappeared the night before she was to appear on the talk show and was found three weeks later in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant section.Investigators determined that during the time she was missing the girl stayed with Junior Bumbury, 28.
A jury of five men and seven women deliberated two hours before finding Bumbury guilty of rape, assault and endangering the welfare of a child. He faces a maximum sentence of 101/2 to 21 years in prison at his sentencing on June 25.
The teenager and her mother, both from Magna, were to appear on a Raphael program titled "Why Must You Dress Like That?" The night before the show, the girl slipped away from the Loews New York Hotel on Lexington Avenue.
Three weeks later, police arrested Bumbury after they saw him slamming the girl's head against a lamppost in Brooklyn, police said.